BUT ALSO IT IS HELL

H of H Playbook by Anne Carson
Jonathan CapeNovember 2021Selected by Barbara Epler

Anne Carson’s H of H Playbook freely adapts Euripides’ fifth-century BCE tragedy Herakles as an explosion of thought in drawings and language. The embodiment of male violence, Herakles is known for his triumphant heroic labours, rather than as a man who comes home from war, goes berserk and murders his whole family. “Suicide,” Carson has remarked, “is his next idea.” But Herakles’ friend Theseus wants to talk him out of the plan, offering possibilities of redemption. Carson’s book, while honouring the original (and its Nemean Lion), flies free of the ancient world and encompasses Special Ops, Jane Austen, washing machines, Anselm Kiefer, an Airstream trailer (the home of Herakles’ family), Victor Serge, and Madness (with a capital M). H of H Playbook is a radical inquiry into Euripides’ redemptive narrative after such slaughter. – Barbara Epler